


Spiders in the Wall

by midnightdiddle (gooseberry)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Alchemy, Amnesia, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Dubious Consent, Germany, Incest, Insanity, Intersex, M/M, Post-Canon, Strangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-01
Updated: 2006-07-01
Packaged: 2019-02-01 04:47:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12697668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/midnightdiddle
Summary: Ed passed Envy, shoving his shoulder against an old door, pushing the warped wood past the doorframe.  “Do you know how to go back?” Ed asked.“The Gate, obviously, but I can’t create a Gate.  You might not have noticed, but I seem to be lack certain things, like alchemy.”  Envy felt the sneer deepen on his face, and it was a feeling he hadn’t realized he’d missed.  “Not all of us are so blessed as Hohenheim’s favorite son.”--Prompt: Ed x Envy: Post [2003] anime, in Germany. Human Envy (how he gets that way is up to the author, so is how he appears). Working from the angle that they’re the only ones who know what’s really going on and what they really are, and how living on the outskirts of everything means that killing each other is a luxury they don’t have anymore. I’m guessing Envy would have more information on how the Gate works than Ed would, but wouldn’t know how to make the information work for him. Bonus points for blackmail, cross-dressing, hair tips, Heiderich, and coffee-dates, but none of these are necessary.





	Spiders in the Wall

He hadn’t started out crazy.

But then, if he thought about it (which he didn’t, ‘cause that’d be admitting he _was_ crazy, and he most certainly _wasn’t_ crazy, so he didn’t _think_ about it, never _thought_ about it, never sat in the middle of the room, hand flat on the floor, thinking and thinking and _thinking_ ), no one really started out crazy. They started out perfectly sane, just like he was.

Sometimes, though, when he was sitting on the floor (though he’d never admit that he sat on the floor, because crazy people sat on the floor. He said he sat on a chair, with spindly legs that twisted and curved and held his body up from the floor, the crazy floor where crazy people sat and stared and slept, eyes open and mouth closed, or mouth open and eyes closed, or both or neither and now he was thinking again, and he didn’t _think_ , ‘cause only crazy people thought, and he wasn’t crazy-) he’d think, maybe it wasn’t that bad admitting he was crazy. After all, if he was able to admit he was crazy, then by default, he _wasn’t_ crazy. It was just when he said he wasn’t crazy (when he was sitting on the spindly chair, with the back that curved along with his spine, holding him upside-down sideways) that he really was crazy.

Or so he thought.

Sometimes, though, when he wasn’t crazy (and sometimes when he was), he didn’t think.

Those were the good days.

x

He remembered a day when he had been _him_. Or would that be “it”? He (or it?) wasn’t quite sure what he (it?) was supposed to use anymore. Perhaps he’d brought it (and he tried not to laugh, really tried) upon himself, but he’d never been happy before. He’d never been happy, looking in a mirror and having blue eyes, or black eyes, or green eyes, looking back at him. Now he didn’t look into mirrors, because he hated the everything that looked back at him. Now it was eyes that weren’t green, weren’t blue, weren’t even the violet he’d once chosen. They were a mottled brown, flecks of everything inside of them, like muddy water the fish swam through. A man’s face, a woman’s lips and nose. Eyebrows that were too pale and too thin, a forehead that was a little too wide and a little too tall.

Imperfect.

He was imperfect, from the long, brown-blonde hair to the small, round breasts to the mess below his waist, of dick and balls and cunt. Imperfect. Everything about him was imperfect, and he couldn’t change any of it, couldn’t change a single thing.

He hated it more than anything.

Fucking world.

x

Envy didn’t go out at night much. He found that looking almost like a girl tended to attract the wrong sort of attention, and the public interest over a body (male, entirely male, not this strange melting-pot Envy was forced to live in) found (strangled and throat slit, with the knife back in Envy’s skirt’s pocket) floating in a canal had made Envy nervous. He had no interest in being found out. He couldn’t lie his way out of things here, not like he could at home. So Envy, resentful as hell, stuck to the rules. He came out during the day, walked on the sidewalks with his head down, shoulders in. If he didn’t attract attention (and he didn’t. He was a god at gaining attention, and at avoiding it, too), then he could put all his energy towards finding a way home (though he never called it home, because the word ‘home’ sickened him, just like cheerful fireplaces with families gathered around tables sickened him).

So it was a right day, just past noon, when Envy saw him. Hohenheim’s brat-son was standing in the center of a sidewalk, head lowered, staring at the lines between the bricks. Envy, for a moment, wondered if it was irony that two of Hohenheim’s sons were here, ducking their heads and trying to push through the crowds. Then Envy wondered if he’d be able to kill the kid.

It was nice, Envy decided, to learn that his body was still as fast and strong as it used to be, even if it was nothing else it once was. Envy had the damn kid slammed up against the alley wall in only moments, his forearm pressed against the boy’s throat.

“Why,” Envy began, and he didn’t have quite enough anything to care about how rough and raw his voice was. “Why the hell- Why the hell are you here?”

The boy didn’t say anything, just looked at him, and Envy wondered how long he’d been here (too long), out of his element (far too long), that even the boy’s eyes could make him feel scared.

“Don’t piss me off,” Envy spat, and he wondered if he looked half as crazy as the kid. “I’ll kill you, you fucking brat-”

The kid’s fingers were cold on Envy’s arm and his eyes looked empty. Envy pulled away, jerking his arm back to his chest, unconsciously rubbing the cold spots on his arm.

“Who?” the kid asked, his eyes staring somewhere over Envy’s shoulder. Envy ignored the look, ignored the prickle on the back of his neck.

“I’m your fucking brother, what do you think?” He watched the boy’s eyes slide down his body, watched the boy obviously search for something to say, and felt a rush of savage glee.

“You’re…” The kid trailed off and Envy picked it up easily.

“Would you rather call me ‘sister’? You can do that, too.” He smiled nastily, wishing his teeth were as sharp as they once were.

The kid was already looking away, his left hand trailing over the wall, tracing between the bricks. Envy hissed, feeling the entire thing, the entire situation, slip out of his hands, beyond his control.

“You’re crazy,” Envy said angrily. The stupid boy didn’t even pause, let alone turn around. He just kept walking, out of the alleyway, his left hand’s fingers dragging on the wall, his mouth dragging on a song.

Envy hated people who hummed.

x

Envy didn’t look for the kid. Instead, he spent the next half-week asking himself why he hadn’t killed the brat. He told himself that it wasn’t because his was lonely. Instead, he told himself it was because (as empty as it might sound) he couldn’t. He (he said, he said) needed Hohenheim’s son. If anyone could open a gate, could create a way for Envy to get back to where (who) he belonged (was), it was Hohenheim’s son (but not him, not the first-born).

So that’s why when, a half-week later, he saw the kid again, he didn’t walk forward and didn’t turn away. Envy blinked, long and slow, sunlight blinding his eyes, and lifted his chin.

“Shorty,” he called, and the kid didn’t answer. “Idiot,” Envy muttered under his breath.

The boy was moving slowly down the sidewalk and Envy started after him, scowling.

“Full-metal! You brat-” Envy grabbed the boy’s arm, digging his fingers in and yanking the boy around, snapping “Ed!”

Ed’s eyes were very gold. Envy wondered, for a half-moment, if their father’s eyes had been as gold, or if his own eyes had been so gold, long ago, before Envy was perfected by death and birth and a thousand more deaths and births.

“Are you deaf?” he asked angrily, irritation growing as passersby hit him, knocking shoulders with his too-small shoulders.

“I could hear you breathe,” Ed said carelessly, and his voice sounded distant. Envy clenched his teeth, hand tightening on the boy’s arm, fingernails digging beneath the skin.

“Then why-”

“Your blood, too,” Ed continued.

“You brat, why did you-”

“It flows too slow for humans. You’re like a rock, like a statue.” Ed’s eyelids lowered, giving him a sleepy look, and Envy felt a cold need to step back.

“I remembered,” Ed continued, voice far sharper than his eyes. “Last night, I remembered you, but you’re different. Your blood’s slower.”

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"You're stone now," Ed repeated, and Envy felt a longing to step back, to put more space between them. "You're in stone, can't move out of it. Your body's frozen, like a statue. It confused me. You're supposed to be water."

“I don’t know what,” Envy began, but Ed cut him off, voice drawling over the noise of the street.

“Do you want this?” Ed asked, and he touched Envy’s face, his fingers sliding up Envy’s cheek. Envy jerked away and Ed grabbed Envy’s head, hand fisting in Envy’s hair, blonde-brown between the boy’s fingers. Envy grabbed Ed’s wrist, snarling.

“What the _hell_ do you want?” Envy’s voice was too loud, even to him, and he hated this, hated losing control so _easily_.

“Do you want this,” Ed repeated, and he pulled his hand away, tugging on strands of Envy’s hair. The boy’s eyelids were still lowered, gold dark beneath his sleepy lids, and Envy wondered if gold had always been an entrancing color, if that’s why they called it a cage of gold.

“What do you think?” Envy bit out. “Of course I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it, I just want to go- I just want to go back, and I’m fucking stuck here-”

“Then cut it,” Ed interrupted again. “It makes you look like a girl.” He looked at Envy thoughtfully and Envy clenched his fists. “The dress, too,” Ed added. “That makes you look like a girl, too.”

“I _am_ a girl,” Envy snapped, hating the words but not willing to fight the semantics.

“Then why don’t you change?”

“Are you stupid? I _can’t_.” Envy pulled his hair free and smacked Ed’s hand away. Ed blinked, looking confused, and Envy began to turn away.

“But alchemy?”

“I can’t use it, you idiot.” Envy bit his teeth together, lips pulling into a grimace. “I-”

“I can,” Ed interrupted, and he sounded proud in the way children do when they’ve accomplished something deemed impossible. “I could change you, make your blood move. Stone to bread, and bread is the body-”

Envy listened to Ed ramble, the kid’s words dragging over themselves, slipping between all coherence. After a few moments Envy finally turned back to face the kid.

“Fine,” he snapped, and he told himself (again and again) that he wasn’t hopeful. After all, he’d lost hope a long time ago.

x

The apartment Ed led Envy to was some blocks away, next to a café frequented by university students, boys who did nothing but sit about thinking, professing brilliant ideas, brilliant movements, that never lived longer than a few hours, or maybe even a few days, in the mouths of the adult-children.

The students crowed when they saw Ed and laughed when they saw Envy. They called after the two, jeering and giving advice. Ed seemed oblivious and Envy followed behind, growing more and more impatient at the brat’s detachment from everything, even from _him_.

“Are you honestly deaf,” Envy finally snapped, “or can you hear _them_ breathe, _too_?”

Ed opened a door to an old house, light from the street trying to sneak into the dark alcove, trying to reach the old stairs. After a moment or two of standing there, holding the door open with his shoulder, Ed shifted.

“They’re scared,” he said, and Envy felt a stab of painful amusement.

“Scared?” he asked. “Of what? You?” His words sounded cold to his own ears, and he relished in it, in the sound of his bite.

Ed blinked at him slowly. “Me. And God.”

“And who are you?” Envy asked bitterly. “You God? Is Hohenheim God? Are you God’s Son?”

Ed began up the old stairs and Envy followed him, watching the kid’s back and shoulders move, tiny shudders, as he spoke.

“Not God,” Ed’s shoulders said. “No God, just the Gate.” Ed paused, turning around, and Envy froze three steps lower than the boy, looking up at Ed’s face. Ed’s eyes were staring at Envy, squinting in the dark, and Envy fought the urge to look away.

“What?” Envy asked once the silent moment had dragged on. Ed blinked, frowning, and Envy pushed past him, continuing up the last few steps to the second floor. “Is there something wrong with your head?”

Ed passed Envy, shoving his shoulder against an old door, pushing the warped wood past the doorframe. “Do you know how to go back?” Ed asked.

Envy looked around the room with disgust, lip curling. The room was dark, just like the rest of the old house, and Envy felt a faint thankfulness for the dark, because he could pretend to not make out the movements from the corners of the room. The air was damp, a mildewy feeling on his skin that made Envy feel an almost delicious shudder, and he felt the urge to kick at the corners, to try to hit one of the scurrying things he could hear and almost see. After a moment Envy stepped further into the room, feeling the uneven floorboards beneath the soles of his shoes, and looked at a far corner, focusing on the flash of pink, hairless skin of a tail.

“The Gate, obviously, but I can’t create a Gate. You might not have noticed, but I seem to be lack certain things, like alchemy.” Envy felt the sneer deepen on his face, and it was a feeling he hadn’t realized he’d missed. “Not all of us are so blessed as Hohenheim’s favorite son.”

“You can’t sit in the chair,” Ed said, and he was staring at the center of the room, at the floor. Envy followed his gaze, staring at the same spot, not entirely sure why he was still standing here, with this stupid, crazy, bastard of a boy. “You’re not human,” Ed continued, “ the chair won’t let you sit. It’ll fall over, and you’ll hit your head. Your brains will come out, through your skull, but you don’t need them, ‘cause you’re not human.”

“Brilliant tact, Full-metal,” Envy snapped, “and what did you do with your brains, because you’re certainly not using them. Otherwise, you’d be the fuck out of here, and I wouldn’t have to listen to your _babble_ -”

“It’s ‘cause the chair,” Ed interrupted, his mouth next to Envy’s ear, “has spindly legs.”

Envy hit the kid’s chest with his hands, pushing the boy away. He heard Ed hit the ground, knees and elbows hitting wood, as he left the room. He took the stairs two at a time, skirt brushing around his legs, shoes barely balancing on the edge of the steps. He cursed to himself as he threw himself out of the house, storming down the street, and his voice sounded too low for his body.

“Fucking _crazy_ , what the _hell_?”

x

Ed usually didn’t look at his room, because there wasn’t much to look at, and when he was looking at what there _wasn’t_ to look at, he began to think. It wasn’t that he wanted to think, because he didn’t (just like how he didn’t want to remember, but no matter how much he didn’t want, he still got it, like a Christmas present he never asked for, but it was still there on Christmas morning, sitting at the foot of his bed, like a monster waiting to eat him, gobble him up with sweet words like a mother’s voice, and oh _god_ , he was thinking again, and remembering again, and he wanted to bang his head against the wall, make his brain go _squish_ , and then it’d all shut up, shut up shut up shut _up_ ). It was just that, when he was sitting in his room, he tended to look at things, or not look at things, and then he started to think.

Ed looked at the walls then looked away, looked back and looked away again. The paint was chipped and the wood was black where the white paint had been peeled away. The dark tears grew, sliding along the wall, eating away the paint in the corner of Ed’s eyes. The tears in the paint looked like spiders, crawling along the edge of the wall, closer and closer to Ed, and he shut his eyes closed, teeth clenched. His lips moved, mouthing words, and he pretended he couldn’t feel things crawling over his skin.

“God’s in the Gate,” the spiders whispered in his ear, their little legs on his neck, the hairs on the legs scratching across his skin. “You can talk to God. He wants to talk to you, wants to talk you, wants to talk to you-”

Eventually, two and two connected in his head, where two and two didn’t always make four, because sometimes it made three, and sometimes it made five, and sometimes it made mothers (or monsters, but he didn’t think of that, he didn’t _think_ of that) come back from the dead. The spiders laughed in his ear, in tiny voices that sounded like the university students outside his apartment, the ones that laughed when he walked down the street, that called him a cripple and bruised his shoulder with rocks and laughed like children. Ed thought about brushing the spiders off his shoulder, but he stopped himself at the last moment, hand raised, fingers touching the collar of his shirt. If he tried to brush the spiders off, and there weren’t any spiders, then he was crazy, and he wasn’t crazy, he couldn’t be crazy. But if there were spiders, then the spiders were talking to him, and he’d be crazy, and _he wasn’t crazy_.

And maybe, if he listened to the spiders that were and weren’t there, he could talk to God, and then, maybe, God would listen. And then, maybe, he’d be able to go home again, and he could sit in the spindly-legged chair, and maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t fall over upside-down sideways.

Ed touched his collar, careful not to brush away the spiders, and stood up from the floor. He needed to find Envy.

x

 

Envy wasn’t that hard to find. Ed listened, and heard the breathing around Envy, the panting of men. Envy was stone now, cold and frozen, and everything around him moved faster, spun faster, hotter and brighter in comparison. When Ed finally stood in front of Envy, staring at the man-woman-thing, Envy looked back with cold eyes that seemed a little dead. Ed wondered, for a moment, why he cared.

“What,” Envy asked carelessly, “the hell are you doing here, brat?” There was a cigarette between Envy’s thin lips, and Envy plucked it from his own mouth after a moment, fingers holding the cigarette in a way that felt too masculine to match the thin fingers.

Ed thought of what to say, forgot it, and thought of it again. The café seemed too loud, people shouting and arguing, and Envy seemed too indifferent, and suddenly the spiders’ voices were very small indeed. Envy looked at Ed, and Ed stared back, mouth empty.

“Sit down, then,” Envy snapped finally, flicking his hand at a chair, cigarette arcing. Ed followed the smoke with eyes, then sat on the chair gingerly, waiting for the spindly legs to give. When the chair remained upright, and him with it, he looked back at Envy, and Envy’s irritated face.

“God,” Ed said, and Envy scowled.

“Coffee,” Envy retorted, and there was another flick of the cigarette, and Ed watched the smoke dissipate into more smoke.

The coffee tasted bitter and Ed swallowed it down, breathing in more bitter smoke. “God,” he said again, and Envy stamped out the cigarette.

“What about Him?” Envy asked impatiently.

“I’m going to open His Gate,” Ed said, and when he looked up, Envy was smiling.

“How?” Envy asked.

“You.”

x

It was through sex.

They went back to the apartment Envy lived in, because Ed didn’t want to go back to where the spiders were waiting, with their tiny voices in the walls.

Light from a streetlamp a half-block away barely crept into the room, yellow on the edge where the floor met the far wall. The light was barely enough to see Envy’s snap of a smile, cold and bright, and Ed stared at Envy’s mouth, almost entranced.

“Well?” Envy asked, and his voice sounded scornful. Ed reached out, and even Envy’s skin felt cold.

There was no kissing, because kissing was something too close, too intimate, and Ed didn’t want to taste the cold salt taste of Envy’s skin. Instead, he touched, sliding his hands up underneath Envy’s skirt, slipping past fabric to find Envy’s cock. Ed curled his hand around the cock, warm skin growing warmer, and he slipped his fingers a bit, cock slowly stiffening in his hand.

Envy’s fingers were fumbling with Ed’s pants when Ed’s second hand slipped past Envy’s balls, fingers touching soft and moist. Envy’s fingers froze, thumb half-pushing Ed’s pants’ button through the hole, and Ed stared at Envy’s face.

“Fuck _no_ ,” Envy snarled, face twisting into something ugly. Ed gave Envy’s cock another long, lazy pull, and Envy shuddered, fingers twitching and unfastening Ed’s pants. When Ed’s pants were out of the way, Envy fought with the dress, tiny buttons that snapped and clattered across the floor, past the pale yellow light, into the dark, and then there was skin, naked skin that felt hotter than Ed had ever remembered skin feeling.

Envy’s fingers were blunt when they were at Ed’s ass, and Envy’s cock was more so, and Ed was sure two fingers weren’t anywhere near the same as a cock, because it felt like so much more, and Ed was certain he hated it. He hung his head, mouth gaping open like he was sure his ass was, panting for breath. Envy was laid out beneath him, skin sickly-sallow in the light, body a motley of small, round breasts beneath Ed’s hand and sweat-slicked balls that slapped against Ed’s ass.

Ed raised himself up, feet braised and legs pushing, then lowered himself again, feeling himself split open. His hair hung in his eyes, blond darkened with sweat that dripped onto Envy’s body, and he stared at Envy’s face, at Envy’s girl-mouth that was making man-groans, brown eyes that were widening then narrowing, then widening again, as Envy’s hands clutched at Ed’s waist, fingernails digging into Ed’s skin.

When Ed placed his hand over Envy’s throat, Envy covered his hand with his own two hands. When Ed began to squeeze, Envy twisted his fingers in with Ed’s, brown eyes staring up at the ceiling. Ed’s hand choked and Envy’s hips thrust and lips whispered tiny prayers that the spiders in the walls wouldn’t hear, because Ed wouldn’t let the spiders hear, because it was Envy’s prayer, and now Envy was _his_ , because brothers took care of brothers. Ed hung his head, further and further down, closer and closer, nose brushing against the wet brown-blonde hair plastered across Envy’s face, and listened to the breathless noises that no-one could hear except Ed.

“God,” Envy breathed out, but Envy wasn’t breathing anymore, but Ed could always hear Envy breathing, even when Envy _couldn’t_ breathe, because Envy wasn’t alive.

Envy’s prayers were, Ed decided, very perfect things indeed.

( _God_ -)


End file.
